Artificial Sweeteners Could Make You Gain Weight, Study

A study by scientists in the US suggests that eating artificial sweeteners could make people put on weight because experiments on laboratory rats showed
that those eating food sweetened with artificial sweeteners ate more calories than their counterparts whose food was sweetened with normal sugar.

The study is the work of Drs Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson, two psychologists based at the Ingestive Behavior Research Center at Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Indiana, and is to be published in the February 2008 issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, a journal of the American Psychological Association
(APA).

The authors suggest that a sweet taste may cause animals to anticipate the calorie content of food, and eating artificial sweeteners with little or no
calories undermines this connection, leading to energy imbalance by increasing food intake or reducing energy expenditure.

They conducted three sets of experiments on adult male laboratory rats who were put in two groups. One group was given yogurt sweetened with glucose
(equivalent to table sugar, containing 15 calories a teaspoon), and the other group was given yogurt sweetened with zero-calorie saccharin.

The rats that had the saccharin-sweetened yogurt consumed more calories, put on more weight, gained more body fat, and did not cut back on their calorie
consumption in the longer term.

All these results were statistically significant, said the authors, who argued that by breaking the link between the sweet taste and the anticipated high
calorie food, the saccharin changed the body's ability to control food intake.

They also suggested that the change depends on experience, which might explain why the obesity epidemic in humans has gone up in line with increased use of
artificial sweeteners, and why scientists fail to agree on the effect of artificial sweeteners on humans: some research shows weight loss, others show weight
gain or no effect at all. Swithers said it could be because those studies did not take into account prior consumption and that people have different
experiences with artificial and natural sweeteners.

The authors also measured changes in the core body temperature of the rats. Usually, when the body of an animal gets ready to eat, the "metabolic engine"
revs up, which raises the core temperature of the body. But when they gave the rats fed on saccharin sweetened yogurt a new, sweet tasting, high calorie
meal, their core body temperature did not go up as much as that of the rats who had been fed on yogurt sweetened with glucose.

Swithers and Davidson argued this was because the saccharin fed rats had a blunted response that had the double effect of making them eat more and making it
harder for them to burn off calories. As they explained in their paper:

"The data clearly indicate that consuming a food sweetened with no-calorie saccharin can lead to greater body-weight gain and adiposity than would consuming
the same food sweetened with a higher-calorie sugar."

Although they recognized that these results may be contrary to expectations, and indeed the news may not be well received by clinicians and health
professionals who support the use of low and zero calorie sweeteners as a way to lose weight, and this data is based on rats and not humans, the authors
pointed out their findings are in line with increasing similar evidence. More and more studies are showing that people who consume more articially sweetened
diet drinks are at higher risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

The authors suggest that other artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame K, probably have a similar effect as saccharin. They also said
that although they anticipate the results on the rats would be similar in humans, this it is yet to be demonstrated with human subjects.

Swithers and Davidson pointed out that it is not all doom and gloom. Although it takes more conscious effort, counting calories is still a good way to keep
control of weight.

Comments(4)

I applaud this study ... finally a smart study that looked at the end results of eating fake sweeteners. And while it also alluded to signal mediated physiology that's associated with the type of calories consumed, you ignored those findings with your last sentence in the article: "counting calories is still a good way to keep control of weight". Reread your article and its results. The last sentence could have been more accurate by stating that all calories are not created equal, and choosing more appropriate ones will yield the results that you are looking for.
A brief literature review will demonstrate that some calories cause more of an insulin response than others, and that type of more in depth commentary would benefit the reader even more after reading the previous material that these authors shared.
Otherwise, good job! 

I think this article focuses more on blaming sweeteners than normal biological process. First, animals in nature do not suffer from obesity. They are naturally in tune with their bodily signals of hunger and satiety. Second, because of this, rats bodies will make up for the fact they are being "tricked" with false sweetness. A human on the other hand will consume sugar sweeteners and are fully conscience if they end up binging on even more food. The purpose of dieting is creating a caloric deficit, and there is no way around the physiological response that our bodies uses to crave sugar. If we delay taking real food by drinking a diet coke, the cravings will hit us that much harder. It is not necessarily a result of the sweetener, but instead it is no different than skipping a meal and then gorging to make up for it (and gaining weight).

On behalf of the Calorie Control Council and with experience as a Registered Dietitian, I assert there is no causal evidence that low-calorie sweeteners cause negative health concerns.

Overweight or obese individuals who use low-calorie sweeteners may be doing so to lose weight or prevent weight gain, since low-calorie sweeteners can be part of a healthy and balanced diet. Also, low-calorie sweeteners are highly concentrated; therefore far less low-calorie sweetener is used to provide flavor to food and beverages.

The level of sweet flavor should be similar across diet and regular foods and should not overwhelm bodily processes of metabolism. The consumption of low-calorie sweeteners has no effect on insulin and blood sugar, factors that play a major role in hunger and metabolism. http://bit.ly/17bVP7Z

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